Riding on Oscar's back

I haven't yet had the privilege of watching the 90th Oscar Awards. Working girls need to work. But I have been filtering through the news. Some massive ideas, though not new, have really found strength in the presentation of all these film personalities, and it had me thinking back to all my uni work discussing, 'why is art worth funding?'

The short and far too generalized answer is because it is the work of our minds. Art helps us to balance, release, share, and communicate what is on our minds. Art records, theories and experiments with every other field. If we got rid of art we would be getting rid of history, story-telling, visual and audio science, technology, mental health, and even division of power. You'd be getting rid of language itself. Art may be filmic, textual, collaborative, performed, or even just a simply beautiful discovery. It is something we should all have in our lives, and in our different ways, because it is the communication of our lives. I believe that the Oscars believe this too.

You could even go so far as describing the Oscars as teaching us how to talk about our needs. Frances McDormand is a champion for teaching the world about the Southern Californian Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, and the concept of an 'inclusion rider'. For those who don't yet know, it was a built in clause to 'enforce equitable casting and hiring, with financial penalties for failure to comply' (Michael Collett for ABC News: 5 March 2018). This clause is not intended as an attack on ignorance, but to highlight unconscious bias.

All the world over, people will undoubtedly be looking for this to be a solution to the rising debate over inequitable practices (gendered and racist). And I am all for it - to be honest, I am rather unphased by it because I am an embodiment of so many cultures already - but I question what does this really mean for a country such as Australia where just about everyone is looking for a chance? Are we really ready for such legalisms just yet?